Cockney rebel

When the puzzled young Cole paused to ask what was wrong, Sim replied in his soft Scottish burr: “I can’t stand your vowel sounds; unless you want to be a Cockney actor for the rest of your life you better do something about it.”

How ironic, then, that Cole’s two greatest characters, Henry Cuthbert Edwards, better known to the pupils of St Trinian’s School for Girls as Flash Harry, and unscrupulous entrepreneur Arthur Daley, were both born within earshot of Bow Bells.

After being told by his mentor to ditch the accent, Cole says: “I got rid of it but I didn’t quite get rid of it completely. Mind you, I had to relearn how to speak Cockney when I came to do the St Trinians’ films.”

Although Cole was mentored by Sim – the actor and his wife gave him and his mother a refuge outside London during the Blitz – he did not come from an acting family.

Given up for adoption at ten days old, he grew up in Morden with two loving parents and only discovered he was adopted while looking for Christmas presents on top of a wardrobe, aged 13. He remembers: “I found a letter on the top of the wardrobe all about the adoption, saying how grateful [my natural parents] were and that they would pay ten shillings a month for my keep. That lasted for about three months, I think. But it didn’t matter.

My mother and father were wonderful people and I had a very happy life with them.

“I was tempted to try to trace my birth parents for a moment or two, but it didn’t last. I thought, ‘Why am I going to look into something that might be rather upsetting for my adoptive parents and might be rather upsetting for me?’ If they had really wanted me they could have found out where I was.”

On leaving school, Cole spotted an advertisement in The Star, “Small boy wanted for West End musical”, and decided on the spur of the moment to audition. He didn’t get the part, but he did get offered the understudy.

“Then the bomb was dropped on me by the producer who said, ‘You’ve got to go to Blackpool tonight’. So I went and bought myself a shirt, a suitcase, a toothbrush, two sticks of make-up and sent a telegram to my parents: ‘Gone on stage, will write’.”

Cole first met Sim when they were both cast in a play called Cottage To Let. They went on to appear in 11 films together, most notably in the first two St Trinians films where Cole played the dodgy fixer Flash Harry, a character who could almost have been a young Arthur Daley.

“It wasn’t much money, but that didn’t matter,”

says Cole. “They were wonderful films. I did four and they asked me to do the fifth (The Wildcats of St Trinians with Maureen Lipman taking on the Joyce Grenfell role) but by then I was in the depths of Minder so I couldn’t.”

Minder was originally devised as a vehicle for Dennis Waterman, fresh out of The Sweeney and the hottest property in British television at the time. Waterman thought Denholm Elliott would be the right man for Arthur Daley but the show’s executive producer, Verity Lambert, and script editor, Linda Agran, thought the role was perfect for Cole.

“I think they just ganged up against the producers and said they wanted me. In the end I think the producers got fed up with the girls going on about me and said ‘Right, you can have George Cole’,” remembers the actor.

Lambert, whose credits include Doctor Who, The Naked Civil Servant and Widows, always had a soft spot for Minder. She even named her dog Arthur Daley, but the series wasn’t an instant hit. A technicians strike disrupted ITV’s plans for the show and it took a leap of faith for the network to commission a second series.

“It was about the third series when taxi drivers started asking ‘How’s ’Er Indoors’?” and saying, ‘You should pay that Terry more money’ and I knew we were a hit.”

By 1983, Minder was the most popular drama on television. ’Er Indoors even gained a place in the Oxford English Dictionary and Minder went head-to-head with Only Fools and Horses in the Christmas TV schedules.

Contrary to newspaper reports last year, Cole loved the role. “They said I hated playing Arthur which was absolute rubbish. What I said was that I was amazed that everyone liked him because he was such an unpleasant person. And he was.”

Nevertheless, television audiences took him to their hearts. Minder ran for 15 years, the last three seasons with a new sidekick for Arthur when Waterman decided he’d had enough. “I still haven’t found out to this day why Dennis left,” says Cole, “but the actor they brought in, Gary Webster, was very good.”

Minder ended in 1994. It was as popular as ever, but Thames had lost its broadcasting franchise.

Otherwise, Cole says he would have been happy to carry on.

It returned in 2009, with Shane Richie, but fans of the original were disappointed when Cole did not appear. The actor is too polite to say what he really thinks of the remake. “People who decided they could do better than us brought Minder back and fell on their faces.

They thought it was just about a spiv and criminals, which it wasn’t. I watched half of the first one and then I had to go out and get some fresh air.”

As he approaches his 90th birthday Cole is as busy as ever. His autobiography – called The World Was My Lobster after a famous ad-libbed line from Minder – is out in paperback this September and he’s still open to acting roles.

“I haven’t retired - they retired me,” he chuckles. “If the right role comes along, of course I’d love to do it.”

• The World Was My Lobster by George Cole is available in hardback priced £18.99 published by John Blake Publishing Ltd.